To make the most of a stunning setting high above the Pacific Ocean, a couple put a fresh California spin on the ideal of Mediterranean seaside living

Terrace View

Terrace View

It all started with a good day at the office. The way the wife tells it, her husband came home from work one day in 2006 in a particularly buoyant mood. The epitome of a self-made man, he had started as a box boy at a major supermarket chain, worked his way up to vice president in charge of its largest division, and then left to form his own sales and marketing company. Soon, with the help of his wife, the firm grew to employ 30,000 people. Now, having just sealed an especially big deal, he blurted out, "Do you want to move?" "No," was her quick reply, before she surprised herself by adding, "Unless it's on the water." He told her to go ahead and look.

The terrace, which is shielded by canopies of woven willow and canvas panels, overlooks Salt Creek Beach and the Pacific Ocean.

Exterior

Exterior

She is a native Californian, and he had moved west as a child. For 30 years they lived happily about a mile inland from Monarch Bay, in Laguna Niguel, a hilly town in California's Orange County. Still, the Pacific had always beckoned. When she started house hunting, it wasn't hard for her to find, if not her dream house, her dream location: a sheer bluff directly above Salt Creek Beach, a legendary surfing haven in nearby Dana Point.

The front steps are limestone, and the plantings include aeonium, lavender, and clipped mounds of westringia fruticosa and pittosporum.